


Disappeared

by hope_to_last



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Investigations, remote locations, the forest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 06:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17017884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope_to_last/pseuds/hope_to_last
Summary: Villages and neighbourhoods scattered on a peaceful mountain have gone silent, all the people vanished. Nobody has an answer for it, much less the police officers investigating the case.





	Disappeared

**Author's Note:**

> I just fancied writing some horror about the place I live.

Crossing the quarantine line didn’t bring any change to the sights. It was still just pines and more pines at both sides, and the road kept winding further up the mountain. Sandra was glad she’d taken a Dramamine, this road had awful curves and bends and otherwise she’d be green around the gills.

“Has the boss briefed you? About…?” Her designated driver coughed uncomfortable, unable to finish the sentence. Must be a new guy, Sandra couldn’t recall his name.

“Yes, he has. In general lines.”

In fact he dragged her out of her deserved vacations, cashing in a favour from a year ago and promising her to get those days back, and more, whenever she wanted. She could have been sunbathing on Ibiza, yet she said yes. A disappearance case? Completely her specialty and it must be something huge for the freaking superintendent to be this unsettled. He’d practically begged to her. So here she was, still in civilian clothing and with her luggage in the back seat.

“So why the quarantine line and not the usual police tape?” She asked hoping to get some details. He hadn’t been much of a talker up to this point.

He mumbled about how the inspector would inform her of everything. She thought about informing him she was an inspector too, but he was nervous enough without her usual biting comments.

Sandra observed the narrow road, entranced by the looming pines on both sides. She’d heard this forest had burnt on many occasions, yet to her it looked dense like a jungle. So different from what she’d seen around Barcelona. The car passed by the husk of a house, full of graffiti and climbing vines, and then, at the behest of the robotic voice of the GPS, they took the road on the right. The only turn in this road so far. There was a faded sign with a name she didn’t read, in front of an unkempt vineyard patch. Not much further ahead a sizeable field broke the monotony of the flanking pines.

_“You’ve arrived to Elm’s Field”_  announced the GPS. Her almost mute companion pulled up to the other two cars parked by the field. Two uniformed persons were talking to a man she recognized. Inspector Morales. He didn’t seem overly surprised to see her. On her part, Sandra was surprised to meet him here; she had secretly hoped to never see his bearded and condescending face again. He shook her hand like they hadn’t parted in bad terms the last time they spoke, and even looked mildly pleased to see her.

“Inspector Sandra Costa. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re here.” If he was bitter about it, he was making a good job of hiding it. Strangely enough, he looked sincere.

“You already met Sergeant Garcia,” Morales gestured at her driver, then at the uniformed couple in front of him. “And they’re officers Paredes and Segarra, from the local police.”

The young woman smiled and waved at her, while the muscular guy shifted uneasy and scratched his arm under Sandra’s passing glance.

“Have you finished cordoning off the area?” Morales asked them.

“Yes sir,” Paredes nodded and her dark ponytail swayed like a whip. “Although it was a pain in the ass to cordon all the fucking mountain.”

Officer Segarra facepalmed and hissed  _“Laia!”_ between his teeth, and she replied with a mocking  _“Pol!”._

Sandra chuckled quietly and pretended to not notice Morales’ disapproving frown. She missed that camaraderie born after years of working with the same partner.  However, she’d come here to investigate a disappearance, and standing there would not help her solve the case any faster.

“Who’s the missing person?”

A sepulchral silence fell over them, all looking at her with varying degrees of nervousness and confusion.

Morales cleared his throat. “All of them.”

“What? What do you mean  _all of them_?” Their faces told her louder than words that no, it wasn’t an elaborate prank. “How many people are we talking about?”

“The cordoned area includes two residential areas, a handful of farms and cottages, and an already abandoned village.” Officer Segarra ticked off fingers as he listed the places. “About a hundred people in total maybe.”

This was… catastrophic. No wonder the boss had sounded so worried when he called her. The press was going to have a field day with this, and she wouldn’t be surprised if the central government intervened soon.

“Corpses?”

“None so far,” officer Paredes informed.

Sandra licked her lips, thinking. “Has a terrorist operation been ruled out yet?”

“Terrorist cells leave bodies behind. Evidence.” Morales snapped at her. He was out of ideas and in charge, she realized. In other circumstances, she might pity him.

A soft rain started to lazily pour down, barely enough to wet the grass.  _Calabobos,_ her mother called it. Fitting, she felt a bit dumb right now. Was there even a crime if there were no victims to be found? Of course, the possibility of all these people packing up and leaving unnoticed was laughable, but a hundred people disappearing overnight was also ludicrous. And worrying. Mostly worrying.

“P-perhaps we should carry on with the programmed search, inspector Morales?”

A sensible suggestion, made by Sergeant Garcia of all people. Sandra had completely forgotten he was here, he occupied so little space he quickly became part of the background. Sandra got in the car with the local police officers, claiming she wanted to ask them some questions. It wasn’t a complete lie. Best of all, her new car companions wanted to talk to her too.

“Can you believe this has gone on for days without anyone noticing?” Officer Paredes commented from behind the wheel. “Some of these people have been missing for almost a week, apparently.”

That was– this was a mess and Sandra was regretting accepting the case. “Is this the first search done here, officer?”

“Apart from me and Pol cordoning off the whole mountain, you mean? And none of that officer thing please, just Laia and Pol.”

“Why a quarantine perimeter?”

Laia chuckled, a joyless sound to convey her opinion of that idea, so it was her companion who answered. “Cover story is that there’s been a toxic pesticide dump.”

As cover stories go, that one was neither particularly good nor bad. Wouldn’t hold for long, tough. Yet it was understandable Morales would be trying to keep the details from reaching anyone outside the investigation.

“Anything else?”

“There was a quick superficial search this morning on the other residential complex. Some of the farms in between too.” Laia had no problems telling her anything she asked about and Sandra loved her for that. Teamwork required freaking cooperation Garcia, goddammit.

The neighbourhood, if you could call it that, was a sparse collection of houses scattered around without a definite order. And people actually lived in this backwater place? The closest spot of civilization was eight kilometres away. Sandra looked intently at the houses from her back seat position. In this section all were clustered together at one side of the road, surrounded by trees and thick bushes, dormant and empty, waiting for owners who had vanished.

“My aunt used to own that house there, but only came in summer.” Pol pointed to a compact two story house. Despite the air of neglect wrapped around it, one could imagine it had been a pretty house back on its day.

The road forked and Laia kept on the main path, until they reached a curious building with a cement terrace and what looked like an old stage. There was a car and a moped parked in front of it. No signs of life around the premises, though. Morales’ car stopped, so they did the same.

“This is supposed to be the local bar.” Morales strode to the short flight of stairs before the door, and Garcia trotted after him.

Being closer to it, Sandra beat them to the punch. A petty victory, but enough to appease her competitive nature for now. She knocked on the metal door. The sound echoed on the presumably empty inside and nobody answered. She looked at the rest of the group, shrugged at Morales and pushed forcefully. The door opened without resistance, groaning dramatically with the movement.

She stepped into the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the half darkness. Nothing out of place at first glance. She paced carefully around, taking into the apparent normalcy of the room. In fact, it seemed like a patron had ordered a beer and was about to return. The glass bottle on the counter remained full to the brim. A single receipt was caught under the bottle, the paper still soggy. It disintegrated when Sandra tried to pick it up.

The door to the covered balcony was unlocked. The secluded space could be considered cozy, with its wooden tables and decorative plants, were it not for the message painted on the window’s glass.

_IT’S AWAKEN_

The ink used was of a suspicious brown-reddish colour, thick and clumpy **.** And undoubtedly scribbled by a human finger. Pol poked the substance with a pen he produced from his breast pocket.

“Not blood,” he determined. “It’s more like goo?

Nothing else of interest on the inside. Morales followed her outside, while the other three investigated the kitchen in depth. Sandra had taken a cursory look at it and knew the most interesting thing they could expect to find was a mouldy fridge. Too tidy in that dusty way of places nobody’s been in for a long time.

She lit a cigarette and walked in silence to the left of the bar’s premises. Morales dogged her steps, the gravel crunching beneath their feet. God, how she wished he would stop! She needed to process her ideas about the situation, and she though better while not being observed constantly.

It had stopped raining but a thick fog was rolling in. The child’s park was an eerie sight covered in mist and so empty that Sandra felt like an intruder. A cracking noise startled them, the rustle of something scurrying through the underbrush of the surrounding forest. Probably it was just a rabbit, or a fox, or any other critter. Animals didn’t give a damn about police cordons. Morales was avoiding her gaze now, pretending he didn’t jump at the sound like she did. Bullshit.

“What did you find during this morning’s search?” If he was surprised she knew about that, he didn’t show it.

“We just looked for survivors. Found nothing. The farms were empty too, even the cattle is gone,” he sighed, looking tired and years older than he truly was. “There’s also the candles found on the abandoned village, but I was told that’s normal.”

Well, she didn’t consider it completely normal. “Oh?”

“Hey inspectors, we’re done!” Laia shouted from the bar’s door.

Morales turned around and Sandra crushed the butt of the cigarette under her foot. Nothing to see here, might as well carry on.

Getting back into the cars Sandra once more chose to go with the local officers. Same as before, Laia drove following Garcia at a slow pace, while Pol and Sandra looked out of the windows for any signs of life. The road eventually bifurcated, and Morales gestured them to go straight forward while they took the right turn. Houses were more separated from each other now, and the ever thickening fog created the illusion of roofs and house frontspeeking up like forgotten islands in the sea of mist. It was a moment as good as any to satisfy her curiosity.

“What can you tell me about the abandoned village?”

“Place’s got bad fame because of an unsolved murder in the 90s,” Pol explained, his distaste of the whole ordeal dripping from his voice.

“You forgot the part about the rumours of a cult!” Laia wasn’t one to remain quiet, and bless her for bringing up the interesting details. Pol looked uncomfortable with it, scratching his arm and avoiding looking at her. “The place’s got  _a fame_ , you know? It attracts people wanting to commune with the spirits or some shit. And the trash they leave behind fuels the rumours of strange rituals happening there.”

Charming. Sadly, it was another dead end. Cults tended to leave behind either corpses, or pissed people who were scammed.

Ahead of them a tall building emerged from the fog, tall like a lighthouse. Curious to see a block like that after a parade of two story houses, especially when in front of it there was a small cottage with an even smaller fenced garden. And its door was wide open, swaying in the gentle but cold breeze.

Laia stopped the car in the middle of the road, alleging there was no traffic here, and went with Pol inside the house. Sandra stopped to look around, taking into the ruined building before her. Who in their sane mind would choose to live in front of that?

A sound came from within it, pebbles and debris crunching beneath someone’s feet and rolling around. Sandra got closer to the ruin, cell phone in hand to light the dark inside. Vines grew all over the walls and the trees here, smothering everything in a verdant carpet. She went in through a man sized hole in the wall. The bluish light of her phone hit the remnants of a reception counter, with a graffiti painted on the wall behind it.  _Welcome._ A small noise to her right, deeper into the dark.

Her foot landed on something slippery, thick and squelching under her weight. The phone’s light revealed the same rust coloured substance used to paint the message on that window. A drop of it landed down as she was inspecting the puddle, heavy and loud in the resounding silence. Looking upward, Sandra saw a stain of the same substance on the cracked ceiling, slowly filtering down from the upper floor. The stairs were collapsed, though.

There was this prickling sensation in her scalp, as if she was being followed. She caught a quick movement out of the corner of her eye **,** but there was nothing when she swivelled around. God, she needed a smoke, this place was putting her imagination into overdrive. Better get out of here and join Laia and Pol on the house.

The fog hid both ends of the road and it felt like the car was in a bubble reality, separated from the rest of the world, which did not help much to ease her sudden nervousness.

The small garden surrounding the cabin was in disarray. The patch of flowers next to the gate had been stomped over and a garden rake lay broken in half, the wooden handle stuckon the ground like a defensive stakeby the side of the gate.

The inside of the house was completely normal, though. The TV was on, cartoons still playing, with a lively green bowl full of popcorn on the floral couch. The only window, right behind the TV, was covered by a crochetedcurtain; and the hearth’s shelf was dangerously full of family photos. Her mother would love the decor.

“Officers? Laia? Pol?” No answer.

Sandra went into the kitchen, looking around the cabin. Nothing. The twin bedrooms. Empty. In the bathroom she found another message, this time painted on the mirror with… it was either mud or shit. She hoped it was the former.

_NO ESCAPE_

A scraping noise outside caught her attention. Sandra ran to the door and stepped out into the fog. She spent a few seconds trying to puzzle why there was a tree next to the car. Then it moved, turning towards her, and screeched like a banshee.

An extreme feeling of  _wrong_ filled her as the tree-like thing started to fucking walk. Sandra bolted back into the house and closed the door, leaning against it as she tried to make sense of what she’d seen. If a stick buggrew to imitate a small tree, and had a disturbingly humanoid looking face, it still wouldn’t be close enough to that horrific thing out there.

A heavy impact rattled the door, nearly dislodging Sandra from her spot. Another thud, followed by a screech that made her wish to cover her ears and press her back against a wall until the chill in her spine went away.

Pushing against the door with one hand, she stretched her other arm to tug at the nearby telephone table and drag it closer, inch by painful inch. The next attack on the door threw her to the ground, nearly hitting her head on the same table she was moving. With one last push, Sandra shoved the auxiliary table in front of the entrance door. Then she stepped away to grab the bookcase next to the TV and bring it to her improvised barricade too. Then went the couch, bowl falling down and popcorn flying everywhere; and then the dining chairs to fill in the gaps. That was the only entrance big enough for that thing, and it wasn’t getting in, no matter how much it banged at the door. Not while Sandra could prevent it. The pounding went on and on, but the barricade held.

She stared vacantly ahead, desperately thinking about what to do, unaware she was digging her nails on her palms. Should she confront that thing? She was unarmed, she’d literally been about to go on a vacation so of course she wasn’t carrying her pistol! She could call for help, but who could help her and how much it would take them to arrive were unknown factors. But it was better than staying here and staring at the wall. She took out her phone with shaking hands. Out of range **,** fuck!

“Inspector Costa, open the door.”

The assault on the door had stopped. In fact, a disorienting silence had taken over.

“Open the door.”

It was officer Segarra’s voice, as if delivered from Heaven itself.

“Through the window!” Sandra retired the curtain and opened the window for him. It was a narrow fit, but it would work.

Hope is a dangerous feeling, more so when ruthlessly squashed. Pol pushed his head and torso through the open window, and Sandra felt the air leave her lungs. His face was covered in a greying, scaly layer, half fused with his clothes, rough looking and inhuman. Only his left eye remained untainted. Thin vine-like extrusionssprouted from his arm, from the same spot he’d scratched before when nervous.

He groaned, stuck in the reduced opening **,** shocking Sandra out of her horrified stupor **.** She might not have her pistol here, but she was full of fear induced recklessness. Sandra grabbed a fire poker from the hearth’s display, an ugly iron thing with a spike on the business end. She rammed it into his human eye. The unnatural, high pitched howl was most satisfying. The next step was to take it out and stab the parasitic growth on the arm. The skin was hard and rigid, but once it shattered the flesh underneath was sickeningly easy to abuse. The creature that once was officer Segarra jerked spasmodically and then withdrew from the window, leaving torn pieces of its bark-like skin stuck to the frame and a splash of rust coloured goo on the floor.

Alright, alright, she needed to barricade the windows too maybe, and -

_Sound of static_ “…Inspector Costa, officers…” _Static noise_

The patrol car’s radio. The sound was slightly muffled, but in the sudden silence she could understand most of it. Garcia and Morales were investigating on their own, she forgot about them in her panic. And unlike her, they were armed.

“…Morales disappeared…” _Static noise_ “…being followed by mutated…”

Shit. She had a bad feeling about this.

“…Please, I can’t- Inspector Morales? What… AHHHHH!”

The scream lasted a few agonizing seconds, and then static took over again, this time forever.

Sandra was utterly lost. Was it safe to assume everyone else was dead or worse? Honestly, she didn’t feel like going to investigate. The house was a mouse trap **,** but safe. Barricade the windows it was.

After about fifteen minutes Sandra had fortified the house and scoured it to the last corner in search of a weapon. Surprisingly, she found an axe in one of the cupboards. Countryside folkswere weird. With its dulled edge it was of more use as blunt ****weapon, but heaps better than a fire poker.

She checked her phone again. Still out of range **.** The meagre light of day was quickly fading, at only six PM. Last time she looked through the window more of those creatures were converging around the house and the patrol car. One of them had a familiar black ponytail sticking out of its inhuman head, blue uniform almost completely assimilated under the bark skin growing all over the body. No matter who they were before, Sandra would chop them all to pieces if any of the creatures attempted to break in.

An infernal chorus of screeches rose, like wolves howling to the skies. Sandra fidgeted with the axe. If she made it through the night, the superintendent surely would send someone to investigate why nobody had reported yesterday. She only had to make it through the night.

The screeching stopped as abruptly as it began. The earth trembled, followed by the unmistakeable sounds of trees falling over. She had a terrible feeling about this. Something low and guttural rumbled outside the house, a distorted shadow passing over the window. Sandra held her breath, praying they would all go away, yet gripping the axe tightly.

A hit against the door shook the barricade and her bones. The door held, but it would not last forever. If pressed, she could still barricade herself on one of the rooms. And it wasn’t like those creatures would fit inside the house, never mind something larger. Right? The door rattled again, the hinges groaning under the strain.

She only had to make it through the night.


End file.
